Remember at the beginning of Return of the Jedi, when Luke is walking down the hallways of Jabba’s palace, and he sees that spider droid with the brain underneath? Well, The Brain Spiders is about those very droids. Whitman takes that one throw-away scene and creates a whole mythology around him. I dig the idea, because these are the kinds of stories I most want to hear in the Expanded Universe — the ones that broaden what we already know.

Of course, this also means that we get cameos from existing characters — Jabba — but it makes sense with this story. Whitman includes another theme here, which is nice since the stories feel more throwaway without them. Here, Zak and Tash are finding barriers between them as they each grow up in different directions, and the story helps them better understand and resolve the conflict that’s growing between them. It’s been a common theme with some of the other books, but the brain spiders bring that conflict to the front, and make that conflict more obvious.

This is another solid, if simplified, read, which is standard for this series. The ending here isn’t as strong as, say, The Nightmare Machine (it has way too much hand-waving in the sudden ending to suspend my disbelief), but it keeps your attention and keeps you reading. For these books, that’s about the best you can get.

"'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"